The Chinese Dilemma in Xinjiang
By Ramtanu Maitra
On July 5, Urumqi, the capital of western Chinese province of Xinjiang,
was thrown into turmoil when a demonstration by some members of the
local Uighur Muslim community, protesting against the migrated Han
Chinese community, turned violent. The violence led to many deaths,
belonging to both the communities. At the time of writing, violence
continues and there are reports that it is spreading into the southern
Xinjiang town of Kashgar, close to Pakistan borders..
It is evident from the way the events unfolded, the demonstration and
violence were orchestrated from outside. Although they are Muslims, the
Uighur demonstrators did not raise Islamic slogans but, instead,
demonstrated against Beijing. The protest was a demand of arrest and
prosecution of the Han Chinese workers who attacked Uighur workers in
a toy factory of Guangdong in Southern China on June 25, 2009, killing
two Uighurs. The Han Chinese had attacked the Uighurs following the
circulation of a report through the Internet alleging that some Uighur
workers had raped two Han Chinese women. According to the Chinese
authorities, that report of rape was found to be false.
British Intelligence and the National Endowment for democracy
But this “false” incident became the rallying point against Beijing by the
West-based organizations run top down by the British intelligence and its
cohorts. Already on the spotlight are four outfits based in the West --
World Uighur Congress (WUC), its funding agent, the U.S.-based
National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the Soros-funded New
York-based Human Rights Watch. NED was deeply involved in financing
and orchestrating a series of “color revolutions” to force “regime
changes” in Central Asia during the Bush administration days.
WUC is an umbrella for 47 groups worldwide, with headquarters in
Munich. Also prominent were the East Turkestan National Congress,
based in Munich, Germany, and a part of the WUC since 2004, and the
British intelligence-infested Amnesty International, based in U.K.
Amnesty International has accused Beijing of "systematic and extensive
human rights violations" against the Muslim minority, including
restrictions on freedom of worship, language and arbitrary arrests, has
called for an "independent and impartial enquiry" into the events amid
fears the EU will treat its giant trade partner with kid gloves. "We
shouldn't be seeing these issues undermined by trade or other economic
considerations. There should be no special cases," the advocacy group's
Brussels director, Nicolas Berger, said.
But the marching order to start a violent demonstration in Urumqi
emanated from WUC. Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled wealthy Uighur
businesswoman, who also heads the U.S-based Uighur American
Association, made telephone calls to Urumqi on July 3 ostensibly urging
the local leaders to take to streets. Kadeer, who met President Bush
during his eight-year reign as President of the United States a number
of times, was lauded by the U.S President as an “apostle of freedom”.
At a news conference in Washington on July 6, Kadeer, “explaining the
telephone call”, said that when she heard on June 3 that protests were
planned, she called one of her brothers in Urumqi and told him to stay
home. “I did not organize the protests or call on people to demonstrate,”
she said. “A call to my brother doesn’t mean I organized the whole
event.”
She added that while the groups she leads condemn the Chinese
government’s excessive use of force, “we also condemn in no uncertain
terms the violent actions of some of the Uighur demonstrators.”
But, Kadeer’s closeness to the NED and her official position with the
WUC leaves no doubt that Kadeer is a pawn of the British intelligence.
She is also the voice in support of the Tibetan leader, Dalai Lama, and
the foreign intelligence-run various anti-Beijing Tibetan groups. She had
gone public in expressing “solidarity with the Tibetan people” and
supporting “their legitimate aspirations for genuine autonomy.”
The British Hook on the Uighurs
Although the Uighurs have been re-activated recently by the British at a
time when the Olympic torch was being brought to China from Athens
for the Olympics in August, 2008, the plan to use them to contain China
and to implode it from inside was conceived a long time ago.
British colonial policy toward the Muslim world has long been formulated
by Bernard Lewis. The British-born Lewis, now at Princeton University,
started his career as an intelligence officer and has remained in bed with
British intelligence ever since. Avowedly anti-Russia and pro-Israel, Lewis
reaped a rich harvest among U.S. academia and policymakers. Britain’s
use of the Uighurs can be understood from that historical perspective
alone.
The origins of the Uighur people may be traced back to the Uyghur
khanate of the 700s A.D. The khanate broke away from the Turkic
Empire and settled across the Tian Shan Mountains, in the area of the
modern-day Chinese cities of Urumchi and Tarpan. In 1932, a local
Uighur warlord, who turned out to be a downright rascal, reclaimed
semi-autonomy during China’s Qing dynasty. The mess created by this
warlord resulted in widespread rebellion in 1933, and brought into the
rebellious group various ethnic varieties of Chinese who lived there at
that time. The short-lived and ill-administered rule of the warlord ended
with takeover by a military commander. According to some observers,
this commander survived with blessing of the Soviet dictator Joseph
Stalin until 1944, when he was finally replaced by a Kuomintang (KMT)
governor for Xinjiang province.
The KMT retained control of the south until the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) Liberation of 1949, when the KMT governor surrendered,
leaving the Uighur leaders as the CCP’s only contestant for power in
Xinjiang. Following a July 1949 meeting in Ghulja with a representative
from the new People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.), the Uighur leadership
was invited to Beijing for further consultation. Reports indicate that the
plane carrying the Uighur leaders crashed en route on Sept. 3, 1949,
killing all aboard. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had already moved
in, taking control of northern Xinjiang.
The arrival of the CCP led to the departure of many thousands of
Uighurs who had the dream and principal motivation of
“pan-Turkism”—re-creation of a band of Turkic-speaking states,
stretching across Central Asia from the homeland of Ankara to Xinjiang.
Although many thousands of Uighurs left China, about 8 .5 million still
live in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China. It is not clear how many live
outside China, but most live in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, on China’s
western borders.
Most Uighurs who dream of setting up “Uighuristan” are highly
vulnerable to the manipulations by the British, who promise to help
realize their hopes, but instead, use them as geopolitical pawns to join
hands with other dissident ethnic groups in the area, to weaken China,
Central Asian Muslim nations, and countries situated on the southern tier
of Russia. This operation of the MI6 is no different from the way it
handles the Mirpuris, promising them an independent Kashmir in return
for carrying out violent actions against India.
Uighur dissension: One edge of the razor
Residents of western China, Uighurs, a minority community of about eight
million people, are Muslims by religion and are products of an entirely
different culture than the Chinese of eastern China. Uighurs fear that
their identity will be swept away by the millions of Han Chinese who are
now settling in western China. As a result, they, like the tribal of
northeast India, remain highly vulnerable. British intelligence have
seized upon this fear to use them in London’s efforts to break up China,
or minimally, to spread a reign of violence as they have succeeded in
doing in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.
In 1999, the Chinese government announced its official plan to develop
western China. Its goal is to try to achieve a satisfactory level of
economic development there in a five- to-ten-year time-frame, and to
establish a “new western China” by the middle of the 21st Century.
China’s western region includes 11 provinces, autonomous regions, and
municipalities under the direct administration of the central government:
Shaanxi, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Inner
Mongolia, Gansu, Tibet, and Chongqing. The region covers 5.4 million
square kilometers, 57% of the country’s land area, and has a population
of 285 million people, 23% of the total population of the nation. More
than half of the country’s identified natural resources are in the western
region.
The “Go West” strategy was announced at the 16th Party Congress, as
Interfax news agency reported in 2005. The policy objective is often
simplistically depicted as China’s interest to pursue both Russian and
Central Asian energy sources. But the strategy is actually more complex.
It is to ensure population settlement in the West, and thus reduce the
territorial vulnerability of western China, and also build up a long-term
base for a productive workforce—a prerequisite for making significant
inroads into the region’s oil and gas fields, and exploring its other natural
resources.
The Uighurs were uneasy about China’s western development plan, since
it would disrupt their “way of life” and lead to their integration with the
Han and other Chinese ethnic groups who would be involved in the
western China development plan.
This is the hook used by the British to create a militant Uighur
community, ready to pick up arms against China. The way the British work
the dissident Uighurs against the Chinese is like a two-edged razor.
What is visible to one and all is the gentle face of Uighur individuals such
as businesswoman cum human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer, or the
humane pleas of Uighur individuals such as Enver Tohti in the U.K. These
individuals “point out” that human right violations against the Uighurs in
Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) by Beijing were committed in
China’s drive to develop and “occupy” western China, and settle the area
with Han Chinese.
The key in this part of the British modus operandi is to keep the ethnic
identity of Uighurs intact, by appealing to the world against
“sinofication” of the XUAR. It is not much different than London’s
strategy in directing the Tibetans against China in Tibet, Gansu, and a
few other provinces where Chinese-Tibetans reside.
In 2007, the British intelligence-run Amnesty International issued a
24-page report on the “policies of the Chinese government” towards the
Uighurs in the XUAR. The document dwelt on China’s “crackdown” against
organized religion as part of Beijing’s communist ethos, and tried to
establish its view that China has seized upon the 9/11 events to
persecute the Uighur Muslims and label them as “terrorists.” The report
stressed that the Uighurs are a persecuted Muslim community that has
been ignored far too long.
China’s geopolitical vulnerability
Britain’s other edge of the razor to cut up China is Pakistan. Decades
ago, Beijing’s Communist regime, imbued with British geopolitical mantras,
came to the reckless conclusion that India must be balanced through the
use of Pakistan. Pakistan had nothing to do with communism, and
moreover was always close to both Britain and the United States, but its
“geopolitical” location was too tempting for Beijing to resist building it up
as an adversary against India. Beijing was aware from the outset that
Pakistani military and intelligence were training terrorists to carry out
violent actions against the Indian-part of the disputed state of Jammu
and Kashmir. Not only China did not say a word against these activities,
but instead, went on supplying Pakistan with military hardware to match
Washington’s sell of weapons to Pakistan.
In this policy, China went a step further. Since India exploded a nuclear
device in 1974, China made sure that Pakistan becomes a nuclear
weapons state. Over the years, brushing aside open opposition from the
United States and the erstwhile communist nation, Soviet Union, China
helped Pakistan to become a nuclear weapons nation. The objective of
Beijing was to build up Pakistan as a military counterweight to India,
while using the former’s animosity to achieve that end.
In addition, Beijing drew another geopolitical conclusion to help itself and
Pakistan, but to undermine India. Pakistan had gifted China a part of the
disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. This territory is used by China to
get its troops in to, and out of, Tibet. Because of this arrangement,
China does not want Jammu and Kashmir to become wholly a part of
India. And in order to achieve that end, China looks aside when Pakistan
sends its terrorists inside the Indian-part of that state. It is geopolitics
of convenience based upon the old logic: enemy of my enemy is my friend.
When the Red Army invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Beijing joined
Washington and London to supply weapons to groups of murderers and
thugs, trotted out as the “mujahideen” battling the Communist
adventurists. These mujahideen were handed over to Pakistan for
training and running the show. However, the show did not end with the
withdrawal of the Red Army in 1989. In fact, the mujahideen, which
included Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens, Kazakhs, Kygyz and Turkmen, along
with Uighurs and Arabs, became the khanjar (sword) of the Pakistani
military and its inter-services intelligence agency, ISI. This sword was
used effectively by Islamabad later to put the Taliban in power in Kabul
and get geo-strategic control over Afghanistan.
Come 9/11, the Americans realized the mistake they had made in handing
over these murderers and thugs to the Pakistanis. They brought the
troops over to Afghanistan to annihilate them. However, the war on
Afghanistan that began in 2001 continues, killing many Afghans and
foreign troops. Meanwhile, the Saudi-British-backed factions within
Pakistan’s establishment continue to hold the key. Pakistanis know that
the foreign troops will leave the area some time and Afghanistan will be
up for grabs once again. That is why they maintain the murderers and
thugs from Xinjiang, among others, as well.
China failed to realize that the trained Uighur terrorists, sheltered
inside Pakistan, funded by Saudi Arabia and directed by Britain, could be
used against them. Since Pakistan is a friendly nation, and a beneficiary
of China’s generosities, Beijing believed, or took it for granted, that
Islamabad will not allow these murderers and thugs to move into Xinjiang
to help the dissenting Uighurs.
But that is exactly what is happening. Under pressure from the United
States, the Pakistani Army has begun a military campaign in the Swat
Valley and tribal areas. These are the areas where these Uighurs, and
other foreign trained terrorists, were safe-housed by the Pakistani
military and the ISI. Prior to launching the military campaign, Pakistan
pushed them out to Central Asia and Xinjiang. Pakistani Army has no
intent to annihilate them, because they would come in handy once the
foreign troops leave Afghanistan.
The process has put thousands of terrorists into Central Asia,
threatening the stability of the Moslem-majority Central Asian nations
of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, in particular. Hundreds of
Uighur fighters have left for Xinjiang through Pakistan’s northern areas.
Let Beijing know that these terrorists will be protected by the
Pakistanis, and directed by the British. Money, of course, will come from
the Saudis and opium.
Some intelligence is secret, while others is available to the general public. Generally, when information is kept secret it is to protect citizens. But in the case of asbestos, the true dangers have been knowns since the early 1900's. The reason they were kept secret had to do with money. 
